Superstition in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the story of a young boy’s journey as he travels down the river with a runaway slave. Twain’s portrayal of Jim, the slave in the novel, is considered controversial because of the stereotypes used to portray the character. One of the motifs that Twain utilises is superstition, which was a stereotype often attached to African Americans. The element of superstition is often used when talking about Jim, and Huck tends to realize that Jim is very superstitious throughout the novel. Jim sees many things, such as his hat being moved off of his head, a spider, hairballs and other instances as being cursed actions or objects that are the work of witchcraft. …show more content…
In the second chapter of the novel, Tom Sawyer decides to trick Jim by taking his hat off his head while he is sleeping and putting it on a tree branch above him. When Jim wakes up, he believes that witches had cast a spell on him, which eventually causes him to bring great attention to himself. Huck believes that Jim has become boastful over this and comments that, “Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches” (Twain 6). In this moment, Huck has formed an opinion about Jim because society has forced the idea upon him that all African Americans are superstitious. As the novel progresses, Huck continues to see Jim as a superstitious slave; in truth, superstition is the only thing that Huck sees about Jim. In another example, Huck knows Jim as the slave who has a hairball that can be used to do magic with. The use of superstition is used prominently to describe Jim towards the beginning of the novel for the purpose of conveying the message